This look into the Gerhard Richter market over the last 11 years was prepared with data and charts from our friends at Athena Art Finance. It is available to AMMpro subscribers. Monthly subscriptions begin with the first month free. Feel free to subscribe and cancel before you are billed.

Sotheby's is offering one of Gerhard Richter's color chart works, 1025 Farben (£5-7m) in London this March. The work comes to market along with a number of other Richters from different bodies of his work. The color chart's appearance on the auction block underscores the evolution of Richter's market over the last decade. In this post, we'll look at the auction history of the handful of similar color charts and the broader market history for Richter. Driven by the success of the large abstract paintings, the Richter market has moved into a position of market leadership over the last decade. We've tried to provide some context around market leadership as well so you can see how the changes in Richter's market effect the artist's position within the broader public art market.

Sign up to Art Market Monitor Premium today

You need a membership to AMMpro to view this article and other exclusive content daily.

You can register today for $90 per month—with your first month free!—or for $756 per year (no free trial period.)

Two significant art purchases—a Bacon diptych and Gerhard Richter’s Dusenjager—have caught Lin San in a terrible bind. But Lin San was not the buyer of either work. Still, he stands to lose a great deal of money because of a judge’s order.

Lin, a Chinese citizen, loaned another Chinese citizen, Zhang Chang, the money to pay for a Bacon work he purchased in the Summer of 2015 at Christie’s in London for £12m.

Zhang defaulted on the loan leaving Lin San no other option but to consign the Bacon to Gagosian to sell for ready cash. Here’s the Courthouse News Service on the backstory:Continue Reading

This market analysis is normally only available to AMMpro subscribers. This post will remain open briefly as a sample.

Monthly subscriptions begin with the first month free. Feel free to subscribe and cancel before the end of the first month if you’re not satisfied. Sign up for AMMpro here.

Art Agency, Partners comments on the Richter market in their inaugural newsletter. Under the heading ‘Misreadings,’ AAP says:

One of the major stories in 2016 was the looming scepter of art market collapse both in general and for specific artists, which, ultimately, proved exaggerated while the reasons for reticence were misunderstood. Take the Gerhard Richter. In the first half of the year, two mature abstracts of large scale for which there had been substantial financial expectation were withdrawn from auction. Based on this fact, there was widespread talk of a pullback in the Richter market.

AAP goes on to object to the idea that there has been a pullback in Richter’s market calling such a view “premature talk of a nonexistent stall.”

It’s not entirely clear what AAP is trying to say here but AAP does link to our post on the announcement of the third Richter sold by Eric Clapton. So we’re going to assume the writer has conflated our discussion of the market for large Richter abstracts with talk of an art market collapse (which would be very hard to find on these pages.)

Further below, we’ll address AAP’s argument. But to understand the market for large Richter abstracts, let’s look a chart (above.) These are the paintings that have driven much—but far from all—of the interest in the artist over the past few years. More to the point, the abstracts, in general, and the large works of five feet or more, in particular, have accounted for a substantial portion of the artist’s auction volume.

Over the course of two distinct periods, you can see from the chart above, the market for large Richter abstracts grew in price, frequency and volume.Continue Reading

Sotheby’s traditional mid-season sale that coincided with the Armory Fair and ADAA has recently been re-christened Contemporary Curated, often using social figures and celebrities to generate interest in the works. This March 2nd, the auction house is taking another tack. Before the Contemporary Curated sale, Sotheby’s will hold a single-owner sale of the Ed Cohen and Victoria Shaw collection.

Sotheby’s announced its lead Contemporary art work for London in March. Gerhard Richter’s Eisberg from 1982 (estimated at £8-12 million,) Eisberg is the largest of three Iceberg paintings made by Richter. One of the three works, Eis (1981) sold at Sotheby’s London in February 2012 for £4.3 million ($6.75 million). The last of the three is owned by the Fisher family and is expected to become part of the SFMoMA collection eventually.